12 things you didn't know about Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the holiest day on the American secular calendar. Really: Who doesn’t like Thanksgiving? Great holiday. Family, friends, football. Just a lovely delight of a day.

And we think we know everything there is to know about the holiday, right? Pilgrims, Native Americans, turkey, the works. Well, I’m here to shed some new light on Thanksgiving. After conducting — on my own time— literally billions of hours of research and interviews, I’ve discovered 12 previously unknown or unreported facts about the holiday.

1) Samuel L. Jackson’s grand-grand-grand-(you get the idea)-grandfather was actually a member of the Wampanoag tribe, and was present at the first Thanksgiving. When faced with the prospect of dining with the settlers, he was a little less than happy. In fact, he’s reported to have said, “Get these mutha(bleep)ing pilgrims off this mutha(bleep)ing Plymouth Rock.” True story.

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2) Over 46 million turkeys are eaten each year on Thanksgiving, and 45.9 million of them are not good. At all. Dry. Blech. Seriously. Would it kill you to baste the damn thing every 20 minutes or so? Put down the Pinot Grigio and baste. Thank you.

3) Sweet potatoes and yams are the virtually the same thing. Only difference is yams have a prize in the middle. And a chewy center.

4) Each Thanksgiving at 5:42 p.m. local time, an uncle falls asleep on a couch. And once his chin hits his chest and then bounces back up in that weird, sleeping-while-sitting-on-a-couch kind of way, an angel gets their wings.

5) By presidential decree, no one is allowed to use the bathroom in the bedroom, OK? Got it? Because really, that’s like, private area. Off-limits. I’ve got drugs in the medicine cabinet, it’s dirty, just stay out.

6) Stuffing was recently ranked by God as the best food in the known universe. Beer came in second, for the record. God knows his food. Amen.

7) Deep fried turkey was invented by Paul A. Heimstikiepiliousberg during the Great New Hampshire Canola Oil Spill of 1815.

8) Kind of off-topic, and really, just directed toward my wife, but ... let me just watch the football games, OK? OK?

9) The tradition of your cousin and his mousy wife and their weird kids staying two hours after the pumpkin pie was served was a tradition first started by Sqaunto at the very first Thanksgiving. Dude would just not leave. Pilgrims were all like, “Boy, am I full! I could sleep for days! I’m so tired, that I bet if I was a sleepwalker, I’d walk right off the Earth!” and Squanto was all like, “You guys got Sega? Let’s play some Madden Lacrosse!”

10) Green bean casserole is a terrorist plot. Except for the French’s French Fried Onions. Those things are just delicious. Eat ‘em right outta the can.

11) The phrase “Have a Happy Thankgiving,” when translated into the tongue of many Native American tribes, sounds suspiciously like, “Thanks for the smallpox, jerkface.”

12) Well this really isn’t a fact, just a statement of my desire to wish each and every one of you a thanks for the smallpox, jerkface. Be safe out there, and make sure to leave my house at a reasonable hour. I’d like to get to sleep.